"Statistical significance and educational significance are often two completely different things. One child out of a thousand who does something uniquely different from other children has no statistical significance, but it may have huge educational significance. We need only look at the history of mathematics and science to note the tremendous impact that some 'statistically insignificant' individuals have had by thinking vastly differently, and daring to deviate from the norm of their times."

(Michael de Villiers)

"You never get a second chance to make a good first impression."

(Head and Shoulders TV Commercial)

"Middle age is when your classmates are so gray and wrinkled and bald they don't recognize you."

(Bennett Cerf)

"The frogs tend to forget that once they were tadpoles, too."

(Korean Proverb) [From mathe 2000 selected papers book]

"Real peace is liberty in place of tyranny, health instead of disease, hope instead of fear. It comes when people have the freedom to voice their views, choose their own leaders, feed their families, and raise healthy children."

(Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the U.S.) [From literature from the Carter Center]

"It is important to remember, in all efforts at improving the teaching of mathematics, that we are teaching human beings, and that what we are teaching them is a human activity with uses and with beauty and with surprises."

(E.J. McShane, 1964) [Sent by Ginger Warfield, daughter]

"Never wrestle with a pig. You'll just get dirty. And the pig loves it!"

(Unknown)

"Hospitality: making your guests feel like they're at home, even if you wish they were."

"The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics."

"Pythagoras walks into an airport, the TSA asks, "Hey buddy, got an Identity?"

(From John Nord)

"What sort of education will teach the young to hate war?"

((Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas) [From Brian Greer]

"Teachers are the only professionals who have to respond to bells every forty-five minutes and come out fighting."

(Frank McCourt (1930-2009), teacher and author)

"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition."

(Jacques Martin Barzun (born 1907), historian) [From Valerie Strauss]

"I spend time on window ledges because I am scared of widths."

(Steven Wright)

"Helping people in need is a matter of fundamental principle, responsibility, righteousness and justice, not an act of charity."

(Source Unknown) [From Yvelyne Germain-McCarthy]

"A little health tip for you: I heard a banana-a-day is a good thing to help keep your colon clean ... it turns out you are supposed to eat it."

(Dwight York) [From a friend on a greeting card]

---------------------------------------------------"Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics."

(From Z-MNU Universitat Bayreuth calendar. The "Beauty..." quote is from G.H. Hardy's "A Mathematician's Apology." Hardy's "apology" is not an excuse or an "I am sorry" statement. In the ancient Greek sense it is about defending a position on something. In this case, Hardy was "defending" his life's devotion to research mathematics. Every budding mathematician reads it. It is totally inspirational. That was my former life before I met and began to understand educators.

Also, from Matt Wyneken:

BTW1 - I just noticed another one of Hardy's quotes at this website: "No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years." He wrote that in 1941. Yet only a few decades later, however, RMS encryption was invented and now rules everything secret in the world, military, economic, etc.

BTW2 - You also included Neil Armstong's everlasting statement among your quotes. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon in 1969, with Michael Collins in support above, only some 60+ years after the invention of human flight (as noted from television's #1 comedy, The Big Bang Theory).

BTW3 - by JPB ... If you are ever tooling down InterState 65 south by Huntsville, Alabama, make time to visit the Rocket and Space exhibition.-------------------------------------------------------